Recommend e-mail software?

[Chiefcrowe]

AFAIK, the password store is separate between Firefox and Thunderbird so you shouldn't have to retain them on FF if you want to in Thunderbird.

I'm probably the least technical person reading this thread. But I thought that the major webmail sites keep your email forever. Even if you delete them. So aren't they still in the cloud somewhere?

Non-rhetorical question. If I were to use Thunderbird, would I have to retain passwords on Firefox? Currently all my web passwords are not remembered.

 

[gmaster456]

another vote for Thunderbird. because its not some MS bloatware it does the job very well and its free.

Outlook and Thunderbird are for two different types of users.

 

[psychosiz]

Been using Thunderbird ever since I upgraded to Windows 7 back last April.
Only problem I have is that Avast! doesn't play nice. It issues its own certificate for encrypted mail connections that's not signed by a recognized issuer, so Thunderbird will ask me every week or so if I want to accept this unsigned certificate.

lol I have almost the exact same time lines and issues as you. What a PITA this is but other than this I agree Thunderbird is the way to go.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Who else came to Thunderbird after using Outlook Express? I skipped Vista and moved to Windows 7 only in 2012. If OE had still been available, I'd probably still be using it. Thunderbird was similar enough that I was sold on it almost immediately. And it's unquestionably superior to OE in most of the ways it handles things.

(Still, I sure wish it would automatically expand the folder tree when a subfolder receives a new message. )

 

[ninaholic37]

Who else came to Thunderbird after using Outlook Express? I skipped Vista and moved to Windows 7 only in 2012. If OE had still been available, I'd probably still be using it. Thunderbird was similar enough that I was sold on it almost immediately. And it's unquestionably superior to OE in most of the ways it handles things.

(Still, I sure wish it would automatically expand the folder tree when a subfolder receives a new message. )

I'm surprised that ThunderBird is so popular, I never really noticed people talking about it before recently... or maybe I just confused it with Apple ThunderBolt or some other Bird thing. After M$ made Netscape Navigator obsolete I switched to hotmail and did webmail ever since, it seemed easier this way because I went through many laptops and accessed the web from a lot of other places/computers like libraries and schools half the time.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm surprised that ThunderBird is so popular, I never really noticed people talking about it before recently...

My impression was people were moving away from mail clients. Really though, there isn't much to talk about. There's nothing ground breaking going on in mail. If a client sends and receives, there isn't much to say about it.

 

[sbpromania]

I've been using Thunderbird for a while, and it's fast, secure and has a lot of configuration options.

Also, it can handle very well large quantities of emails.

 

[TheGardener]

Thanks for the replies. My question about passwords in Firefox and Thunderbird, are security based.

 

[ArtShapiro]

Outlook and Thunderbird are for two different types of users.

Could you elaborate a little?

I use Thunderbird for Usenet, but have never seen a reason to switch from Outlook for email (I use 2003, 2010, and 2013 on various computers.) The arguably-obnoxious Microsoft ribbon interface used in Office 2007 and up seems less irritating on Outlook than in the other Office products like Word and Excel.

Of course, price is an issue, but I have been able to obtain Office suites at minimal cost due to corporate perks.

If we accept Outlook as an industrial-strength product, I don't see any advantages to Thunderbird. So I find this an interesting topic.

Art

 

[Cerb]

Could you elaborate a little?

It's always been less than stellar, but 2013 is just junk.

Even rooting the account, it sometimes wants to use its own Deleted Items, and Sent Items. I can usually recreate the profile a few times, and it will eventually get it right, if it's stubbornly not mapping them. Not rooting the account, it seems to depend on the phase of moon whether it will get the right folders. Of course, you can't set them.

It will randomly decide not to search correctly, until blowing away and recreating the whole PC's search indices, which can take over a whole day.

OSTs break pretty regularly, and there isn't a GUI in Outlook to scan and repair them. Sometimes, a new profile is needed. This suspiciously seems to occur most often after a major set of OS patches. It's been happening many times as often with 2013 as 2010. I now install 2010 when I can use a volume license.

You cannot set mail to be unread in message rules, and doing so in VBA, which used to work, no longer works (why? To mix POP and IMAP--easy to do in Thunderbird!).

Of course all of this is moot if you use Exchange, but we don't all do that.

I used it at work, because it's what I have to support, until it randomly screwed up my profile one day. Meanwhile, Thunderbird regularly goes on for years at a time, with the same profile, even across major upgrades, or side-grades, of itself and the OS.

If we accept Outlook as an industrial-strength product, I don't see any advantages to Thunderbird.

I accept it as a product for captive audiences; without a sufficiently strong demand for alternatives, due to those of looking for alternatives often being open to using different programs for different tasks.

 

[ArtShapiro]

It's always been less than stellar, but 2013 is just junk.

Interesting rant - thanks!

I agree that the limitations of rules are sometimes between awkward and impossible - good point.

I've always used PST files, not OST, and simply haven't had those corruption issues in lord-knows-how-many years. I can see why you'd be somewhat unenthused about the product.

 

[Cerb]

IMAP means OST in 2013, and users (myself included) wanting matching mailboxes across devices (except the odd ones that don't ) necessitate it. PSTs get corrupt, too, but don't seem to screw up Outlook's functionality for daily use (for a real example, exporting contacts might fail, then work after using ScanPST, but otherwise everything seems fine).

 

[John Connor]

Been using Thunderbird for a loooong time. Tried Postbox Express and in fact it allows you to import TB mail settings, but I keep using TB. I was reading about TB on Wikipedia and I guess the French military helps develop TB or some kind of involvement.

Couple of things.

I use the addons Dr.Web Anti-virus Link checker and if you have many inbox's use Identity chooser that way you don't accidentally send with the wrong E-mail. That has happened to me before.

If you use a VPN there are some considerations and I blogged about that, but I guess I can't share my blog link so I'll just post what I wrote. It is as follows:

I use a VPN all the time and just learned about WebRTC which can leak your real IP address.

However, a recently discovered security flaw allows remote sites to take advantage of WebRTC (Web Real Time Communication, a feature built in to most browsers) to reveal a user’s true IP address, even if they’re connected to a VPN. As far as we know, sites aren’t taking advantage of the flaw yet, but considering services like Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, and others are taking steps to identify and lock out VPN users, it’s not a stretch to assume they’ll start.
A few lines of code is all it takes to remove the location protection you get from using a VPN, and figure out where you’re actually located and who your internet service provider really is (who can then tie your address back to who you are specifically.) While the vulnerability is primarily browser-based right now, any application that can render web pages (and uses WebRTC) is affected, meaning anyone who wants to can see past your VPN to where you really are and who you really are. Advertisers, data brokers, and governments can use it to peek through your VPN to find out where your connection is really coming from. If you use services like BitTorrent, have a set-top box like a Roku, or just stream music or movies on your computer through a site that’s not available in your country (or you’re an expat and live abroad), the apps and services you use could suddenly stop working.

​

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-see-if-your-vpn-is-leaking-your-ip-address-and-1685180082

https://www.browserleaks.com/webrtc

I also use the Thunderbird E-mail client so I went into Tools | Options | Advanced | Config Editor.
Now search for media.peerconnection.enabled and set it to false.
I use the Pale Moon browser and as of this time it doesn’t have media.peerconnection.enabled.

Update-
Another thing to consider is your DNS and potential leaks. If you use a VPN I would set this site as your home page so that you can make sure you are tunneling to the location you expect. https://www.dnsleaktest.com/
Now I would use the extended DNS test. If you see your ISP’s server then your ISP is using transparent DNS servers. You might have to do a Whois on the IP addresses listed from the extended test. http://whois.domaintools.com/
If you discover that your ISP uses transparent DNS then look here and use the dnsfixsetup program. https://www.dnsleaktest.com/how-to-fix-a-dns-leak.html

 

[Morbus]

Anyone who thinks outlook is good doesn't know what "good" is.

I respect that people have opinions though. No shame in not knowing what "good" is.

 

[Muse]

That said, I doubt I'll ever buy another Outlook upgrade. The current version is fine for my needs, and I imagine one of these days I'll abandon offline mail for web-based, since that seems to be where everyone's going. I just don't like the idea of all my personal emails being out there in the cloud where they're accessible by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., not to mention hackers.

I paid for Forte Agent 1.93 after using Agent Free for a while, quite a few years ago. There have been many upgrades, new versions since, but I have never been tempted to upgrade. There's a newsgroup devoted to it all where I go sometimes if I'm having a problem.

It's not web based. The coolest thing about Agent is that it's incredibly self contained. I can copy the Agent tree onto a flash drive and run the exe right from the flash drive from any computer and it just plain works. Or, I can copy one computer's installation to another one, presto, I have my email history and a working installation there, I press Ctrl+E and I get all emails that haven't yet been downloaded to the installation. I have separate installations on all my machines. They all leave messages on the ISP's server, so each installation downloads everything. It makes for a backup solution, if one installation goes down, the others are still OK. I've had one or two such occurrences, a corrupt file.

Setting up folders and filters is easy. Supports newsgroups, too, which I still sometimes use. It looks nice, is not buggy. I can do searches. I do delete stuff, but am not obsessive about it, I just let the data folder grow. Receipts, registrations, I generally keep info about those in a separate database application. I can search my Agent inbox in the date of an item and find it, if I want a specific email.

A downside to this is that only the computer I use to send an email will have that in the outbox (all the computers have all the received emails). My workaround for this (I may not remember what computer I sent a message from after a time), is to cc myself sometimes if I want to have a copy of what I send on my other machines. I suppose webmail wouldn't have that problem, but I haven't done that ever. My ISP allows only so much data in my inbox and they delete stuff. I don't have that problem with my email client system.

It does not support HTML, which may be a good thing. I can and do launch websites, and it supports launching links from posts, of course.

I would consider going to a new/different email system but would want, if possible, to integrate the data I have with a new system. I don't know how feasible that is. It's not a pressing matter!

 

[Muse]

I'm probably the least technical person reading this thread. But I thought that the major webmail sites keep your email forever. Even if you delete them. So aren't they still in the cloud somewhere?

Non-rhetorical question. If I were to use Thunderbird, would I have to retain passwords on Firefox? Currently all my web passwords are not remembered.

When I moved from AT&T to sonic.net for my ISP, AT&T said I would have indefinite access to my old email account, i.e. I could see any emails sent to my old address going forward. It turned out to be incredibly difficult to do that. I was never able to do it, I guess they lied to me. I finally just gave up.

 

[el padrino]

using 'the bat!' since 2001

 

[Rowland]

Another happy Thunderbird user here... It works fine and I have the portable version so I can take it with me on an USB drive too... Using it I can access all my Gmail accounts (IMAP) without logging in in browser wherever I go....

 

[slag]

Gmail in a browser. Does everything I need it to do and no need for a client.

 

[lxskllr]

Gmail in a browser. Does everything I need it to do and no need for a client.

That's what my boss said. The internet was down yesterday so he couldn't access attachments to email he had gotten. He had to forward them to my phone, and I put them on the server. It got done, but if he used the client I put on his machine, it would have been much easier.

 

[lucia]

I like Outlook a lot, mainly for business use. It's a solid product for the office but I would never recommend it for home use - there are a lot of other better products out there, especially browser based.